Darkness, darkness, everywhere, but…
He trudged along, disgruntled. Get your head screwed on straight, he muttered.
What the hell was he doing out there anyway, tramping through the coagulating gloom down a country road, not sure how far he had to go or which way to turn?
The facts, man; just the facts…
Man goes missing in Cedar
A 61 year-old man suffering from what friends describe as ‘deep depression and serious delusions’ has gone missing under ‘suspicious circumstances’ in Yellow Point.
Buddy Hope left the Mahle House Restaurant suddenly after he and companion Andrea Clarkson argued. “We had such a lovely dinner, then everything fell apart,” Clarkson said. “He was so upset. I’m worried.”
Hope is described as gaunt and wrinkled, with dirty grey hair and self-pitying, faded blue eyes. There’s an aura of ‘sagginess’ about him, according to witnesses.
The recently retired and separated journalist has been living in a camper behind the home of long-time Chemainus residents Harry and Bernice Sanderson. “He’s unusual but kind-hearted once you get to know him,” Bernice Sanderson said.
The Sanderson’s employ Hope as a ‘handyman-companion’ in exchange for room and board. Harry Sanderson, well known in Chemainus as The Mural Gazer, said Hope was beginning to take an interest in “getting behind the bricks and mortar of this town.
“He might have gone farther than he should, too quickly,” he speculated.
Hope’s wife, Leanne, describes her ‘sometime partner’ as ‘helpless but not harmless’. “This is just the kind of thing I’ve been afraid of since he left us.”
Police are asking people who may have seen Hope to contact them, but caution against approaching him directly. “We are concerned he’s in an unstable state of mind and might react unpredictably,” said RCMP spokesperson Cst. Frank Baumgarten.
Buddy spiked his fake news item. After all, what could he invent stranger than the truth. Concentrating, he placed one foot in front of the other, shambling in the general direction of Chemainus, twenty-five kilometres away.
He wasn’t surprised that in their recollections, Andrea had avoided mention of her non-consensual insemination project, or Leanne had misconstrued his leaving as a form of abandonment…
A yellow incandescence up the road distracted him from these bitter ruminations. Tired and disheartened as he was, he managed a weary interest in the shape of the light, which resolved itself into the form of a bicycle, leaning against a telephone pole. “Thank you,” he said to whoever had put it there. But when he tried to mount it, the bike resisted, a rattling chain securing it to its place.
“Bastard!” he yanked at the unyielding metal, the chain clanking in opposition. “Prick! Asshole!” In a fit, he tugged violently, bellowing into the darkness beyond the feeble glow of his lonely street lamp and its abandoned country road. “Let go!” he yelled with a mighty heave.
When the chain snapped, Buddy whooped at the defeated heavens, even as he toppled backward, the bike landing on top of him.
Upright and on his way again, he discovered that the front wheel wobbled and clunked threateningly, the chain skipped, the back tire had barely enough air in it to keep the rim from grinding against pavement. But he was making progress… of a sort… and wobbled on with grim but oddly satisfied determination.
He would have preferred the back roads, but there’s no way to get from Cedar to Chemainus without merging onto the Trans Canada Highway, where his lonely pilgrimage suddenly had an audience.
His spirits sank. He felt ridiculous, clattering along on his junker-bike, the cars whizzing by in sudden flashes, their taillights vanishing into the mist, which blended into the elongating black-hole of his unattainable future. “Fucking Einstein,” he griped. “Fucking donuts!”
‘HO…ONK!’ The occasional Doppler blare of an angry horn and the compression waves of the passing cars made things infinitely worse.
Whoosh, whoosh. A sound he recognized but couldn’t explain caught Buddy’s attention. A soft, yet powerful, feathered stroking of the air—the still, ambient air that sets heartbeats in a cushion of silence… Whoosh, whoosh… a radiance welled to his right.
“White Raven!” he cried out, amazed how happy he was to see her.
She roosted on his shoulder, folded her wings, shook her feathers, and settled in. Where, might I ask, are you going? she gabbled.
He pedalled on, hunkered to his task, Sisophys on wheels.
I suppose we won’t be able to figure that out without asking where you are and where you’ve been, she mused.
We’re off to see the Wizard The wonderful Wizard of Oz We hear he is a whiz of a wiz If ever a wiz there was If ever, oh ever a wiz there was The Wizard of Oz is one because Because, because, because, because, because Because of the wonderful things he does We’re off to see the Wizard The wonderful Wizard of Oz...
The lyrics reminded him of Gloria and Robbie, sitting in front of the TV, munching buttery popcorn, feet up on the coffee table, one on either side, leaning into him.
And just where do you expect to find this wizzy wizard? White Raven intruded.
The question puzzled him, so he pedalled harder and harder, the chain rattling and the bearings grinding in their gritty races.
“Dunno,” he said. “Dunno if I even care.”
Oh! White Raven croaked.
Then Ricky Nelson chimed in…
I went to a garden party To reminisce with my old friend A chance to share old memories Play our songs again When I got to the garden party They all knew my name No one recognized me I didn’t look the same Well it’s all right now...
Next: The Picnic – Part 1